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mini-reviews

Mini-reviews are shorter and more focused than traditional literature reviews. Their specific format varies between journals, however they all have a few things in common: They are topical, concise and specialized, rather than being exhaustive. They quickly bring the reader up to speed on current research in a field, particularly when there has been a major change in thinking. This is in contrast to major reviews, which provide a comprehensive overview of a subfield.

Mini-reviews often synthesize recent research, offering insight and new direction in an important emerging research area. They ideally propose new ideas and hypotheses that arise from the synthesis. Challenging current views in ecology and embracing a bit of controversy is welcome. Despite being called minor, these reviews may garner higher readership and impact than major reviews, due to their conciseness, readability and relevance. I think they are particularly suited to interdisciplinary synthesis, as they do not require writing an exhaustive background from each field, making it easier to communicate the interesting or important aspects of the crossover to a wider audience.

While only a handful of ecology journal explicitly provide guidelines for a mini-review, but quite a few impose a shorter word limit (< 3000 – 5000) and limit references to around 40, essentially requiring a mini-review. Other keywords I have noted are ‘topical’, ‘specialized’, ‘research reviews’, ‘briefings’ and ‘question-based’.

They following ecology-related journals either publish mini-reviews by name, have previously published mini-reviews or their submission guidelines strongly suggest that they welcome the format: